Liliendahl on Data Quality

Master Data Management (MDM) is a lot about data modelling. When you buy a MDM tool it will have some implications for your data model. Here are three kinds of data models that may come with a tool:

An off-the-shelf model

This kind is particularly popular with customer and other party master data models. Core party data are pretty much the same to every company. We have national identification numbers, names, addresses, phone numbers and that kind of stuff where you do not have to reinvent the wheel.

Also, you will have access to rich reference data with a model such as address directories (which you may regard as belonging to a separate location domain), business directories (as for example the Dun & Bradstreet Worldbase) and in some countries citizen directories as well. MDM tools may come with a model shaped for these sources.

Tools which are optimized for data matching, including deduplication of party master data, will often shoehorn your party master data into a data model feasible for that.

A buildable model

When it comes to multi-domain MDM we will deal with entities that are not common to everyone.

Here a capability to build your model in the MDM tool is needed. One such tool I have worked with is Semarchy. Here semi-technical people are able to build and deploy incrementally more complex data models, that are default equipped with needed functionality around handling a golden copy and auditing data onboarding and changing.

A dynamic model

Product Information Management (PIM) requires that your end users can build the model on the fly, as product data are so different between product groups.

In my current venture called Product Data Lake the model has these main entities:

This model resembles the data model in most PIM solutions (and PIM based MDM solutions), except that we have the party and their two-way partnerships at the top, as Product Data Lake takes care of exchanging data between inhouse PIM solutions at trading partners participating in business ecosystems.